4.1. Take a Safari Tour

You get onto the Web by tapping the Safari icon on the Home screen (circled); the very first time you do so, a blank browser window appears, ready for your instructions. To type a web address into the browser, tap the address bar so the iPad keyboard pops up, ready for your input.

Safari has most of the features of a desktop browser: bookmarks, autocomplete (for web addresses), cookies, a pop-up blocker, and so on.

When you go to a web page, ‘Pad-Safari behaves just like a desktop browser. It highlights the address bar as it loads all the elements on the page, and gives you Apple’s circular “Wait! Wait! I’m loading the page!” animated icon at the top of the screen.

Here’s a quick tour of the main screen elements, starting from the upper-left:

• , (Back, Forward). Tap the button to revisit the page you were just on.

  Once you tap , you can then tap the button to return to the page you were on before you tapped the button.

• (Page Juggler). Safari can keep multiple web pages open, just like any other browser. You can have up to nine pages open at one time.

• (Bookmarks). This button brings up your list of saved bookmarks (skip ahead a few pages to read more about bookmarks).

• (Add Bookmark). When you’re on a page you might want to visit again, bookmark it by tapping this button.

• Address bar. This empty white box is where you enter the URL (web address) for a page you want to visit. (URL is short for Uniform Resource Locator, which makes it sound like a search service for military supplies.)

• , (Stop, Reload). Click the button on the address bar to interrupt the download of a web page you just requested (if you made a mistake, for instance, or if it’s taking too long).

  
  

  

  
  

  Once a page finishes loading, the button turns into a button. Click this circular arrow if a page doesn’t look right, or if you want to see the updated version of a web page that changes constantly (such as a breaking-news site). Safari re-downloads the page.

• Search box. Safari has a separate little box for typing in search terms. Tap here and the keyboard pops up. Type in your keywords and tap the Search button that replaces the Return key on the keyboard.